Gas Powered Games has laid of some staff shortly after the launch of their Wildman Kickstarter seeking $1.1 million for a new action/RPG. This is reported by Kotaku, who confirmed that the company has cut some staff with honcho Chris Taylor after getting wind of them through the grapevine. Taylor did not confirm the extent of the layoffs, however, so there are dramatic elements to the Kotaku report which remain speculative, as one source told them these were due to the Kickstarter underperforming, while other sources have told them that almost everyone who worked for the company was let go. There's a follow up to this on Gamasutra. "The studio is still operating, but we had to slim WAY down to conserve cash reserves," Chris Taylor confirmed for them, confirming some earlier comments that they are all in on Wildman: "We spent all the last dough that we've had, and the last several months working on it. So we're betting the company on it."

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Stormsinger wrote on Jan 19, 2013, 01:10:I've no answer to that, but I will say that I'm not a fan of supporting businesses that have to resort to massive layoffs. I prefer management that takes a more conservative approaches to finances, and avoids screwing the employees.

But we have to keep in mind this is a game company, they shouldn't be judged identically to other businesses in terms of management. Game companies are to other companies what paycheck-to-paycheck just-keeping-food-on-the-table families are to more financially secure families.

Just the very nature of how they have to operate means they almost never build up huge amounts of cash-on-hand to carry them through tough times. They keep moving or they die. It's just very fast-paced and unpredictable, and unfortunately that means fast-paced and unpredictable layoffs.

This is why cash-grab MMOs and things like Steam exist. Or even hardware/first party publishing machines like Nintendo. Many game companies have realized that just making games will never give you a stable and successful company. You have to tap into some kind of alternate revenue stream if you want to be around for the long haul, because eventually you are going to fall and you need a parachute that isn't made out of empty hopes and dreams, but rather cash-on-hand.

Every time you preorder a game, you become part of the problem. Don't be part of the problem.